Can I add the newly claimed domain to the anchored space just as easily as I could before?

Executing…yes, I can!

Can I remove it at will?

Again, I can!

It’s not instant, but I’d already established that when creating anchors in the first place. In other words, it takes just as long to add new domain to an existing anchor as it does to create a fresh anchor.

Excellent, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for! My entire domain is now anchored to this individual soulstone, and I have peace of mind knowing that if the anchor ever gets destroyed, the fixed domain space will re-attach itself to my own core without shifting positions.

Now I should have no trouble relocating my core to a more secure location as my domain won’t move alongside it anymore.

Actually, there’s a potential problem; if someone or something manages to make its way into my dungeon and nab my primary anchor, the connected domain could be shifted a great distance, thus undoing weeks, nay, months of progress!

So, what, should I relocate my core and then simply shatter the soulstone to reaffix my domain to my core in its new location?

No, though that’s certainly a viable option, I have a better idea; why not construct a basic mechanism which allows me to crush it at will?

Hear me out, there’s no reason to destroy a perfectly good soulstone if I can avoid it. If I keep it around as an anchor, that means I’m totally free to move my core whenever I desire without having to repeat this ordeal of a process! My mana takes a long time to replenish and it would be a real shame if I was unable to relocate my core without destroying my domain in the process simply because I wasn’t at full capacity! Given my size, it will probably be a couple of weeks before my mana is back to full, I do not want to be caught unprepared!

It’s not like mana grows on trees- you know what I mean.

“But Ike!” I hear you saying, “What if a mage inhibits your control again? How could you destroy the soulstone then?”

Simple: A deadman's switch.

Rather than moving my core right away, I decide to go ahead and implement this failsafe. I carve stone away from the wall surrounding the soulstone such that it now rests atop a small pillar of solid rhyolite, with the initially exposed face still coated in clingy plants. As I’m working in a confined space right now, I don’t bother with carving out quality blocks and merely settle for dungeon helper sized pebbles. I really can’t be bothered to widen the entrance to this cubby to provide access to my cart network. And anyway, doing so would only serve to reveal my precious anchor’s position. So why bother?

The newly excavated anchor room is a cylinder roughly forty centimeters wide and twenty tall. Sure, that’s small, but I don’t gain anything from making it larger. In fact, its size is a minor form of protection in and of itself.

Now, how should I go about constructing this anchor-destroying mechanism? I think my best bet will be a falling object slamming into and subsequently shattering the fragile little cluster of crystals. Yes, a pillar of stone would suffice! Now the question remains, how do I trigger it? It somehow needs to remain functional even in the presence of a mage’s interference.

I know how wide the invading mage’s sphere of influence was, but I can’t just assume that other mages can’t greatly exceed it. Therefore, a long-distance pulley system would be too risky.

Should I then use animals to operate it? The idea has merit however, I worry that unforeseen magic abilities could render it dysfunctional. I’m thinking poison gas, instant death, dungeon control jamming, etc. I really don’t know what to expect. What I’m trying to say is that living operators introduce more variables than I’m comfortable with. Still, I may have to settle for this if nothing else comes to mind.

I could simply telekinetically levitate it twenty-four-seven, that way when a mage approaches, my levitation will be inhibited and thus the pillar will fall onto the soulstone. Though of course constantly holding something up like that will hamper my mana regeneration rate, as it will require continuous upkeep. Aha! I could work around this by implementing a lever and ropes!

Consider a lever with a central pivot, if I attach the pillar to one side of the seesaw using hemp ropes and weigh down the other side with a heavy sphere of stone, the mana upkeep would be minimal. I can use my telekinesis to keep the sphere from rolling off its side of the lever. Then, when a mage comes along and inhibits my control, the sphere will be free to roll off the inclined plank, thus dropping the pillar onto the soulstone!

But what happens if I pass out? Something which, and it pains me to say this, occurs quite frequently…

Telekinesis is not the answer.

What are my options for exerting control in an inhibited area? I can’t merge, cut, or levitate objects, but I can certainly command organisms and use runes! I’ve ruled out the first, but what about the second?

One particular spell comes to mind: Force Missile. One of the three wands I’d purchased carries a rune able to cast the Force Missile spell. While I fail to see how a “force” can manifest without a reactionary recoil of some kind, I don’t really need to understand it for it to be useful. Imagine the previously described dead man’s switch apparatus except now the spherical stone counterweight rests in an indention carved into the seesaw, thus preventing it from rolling free. If I cast Force Missile at the sphere, it would get knocked off the lever, thus triggering the mechanism.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Yeah, it technically wouldn’t be a dead man’s switch anymore, but who cares?

Unfortunately, just as I had with the animal operator idea, I see another set of unknowns which potentially disrupt my plan. Can I even use runes in an inhibited area? Probably, but I don’t know for sure. Additionally, can a mage block a rune from casting a spell?

I can’t think of a way to make the mechanism trigger in every scenario!

Oh! Who says I can’t have multiple triggers for different situations though? If the only thing needed to activate it is knocking the counterweight off, then I can do it in three different ways with none of them interfering with each other!

If living my whole life in space has taught me one thing, it’s that redundancy is king!

Method A) I can command several dungeon helpers to push the counterweight off the lever.

Method B) I can cast a Force Missile spell from the wand which I’ll have pre-aimed and mounted in the wall.

Method C) I can yank the boulder off by tugging on an extremely long attached hemp rope which will hopefully be long enough to exceed the interference radius.

This is brilliant, and I can use a similar approach when I design a new series of traps later!

…

Seven hours later and it’s complete. For a human, that’d be an extremely impressive time, but for a dungeon core with near-total control over its environment, you could rightfully say that I took a little too long.

Of course, I have my excuses. For starters, I’d taken my time and performed a few test trials with a prototype. For something so simple, this hardly should’ve been necessary, but I wanted to be sure all the same. Furthermore, because I want to implement this with much needed lethal traps, I wanted it to be perfect.

And perfect, it is! Well, besides the less than optimal materials… The whole thing is crafted from yellow fungiwood. As it’s not a very strong material, less so than even pine, I had to overengineer the balance. I didn’t want it snapping, after all. Still, the extra bulk should have no effect on the mechanism’s functionality.

I should probably modify my fungiwood species to be denser. Noted!

With everything taken care of, it’s finally time to move my core to a safer location. But before that, I need to prepare the new room.

Currently, the deepest portion of my dungeon is a web of access tunnels I’d dug throughout the rhyolite stone underneath the captured cavern. While close, my network hasn’t yet pierced into the limestone strata underneath. I want to position my core in a roughly central area, however, as I plan on expanding to the even deeper chasm and river, I need to act accordingly.

With this in mind, I begin to branch off from one of the access tunnels. Just as I did when carving out the anchor room, I don’t bother with making blocks, this tunnel needs to remain narrow to offer optimal protection.

The specific access tunnel I chose to branch away from is much narrower than the average, allowing for only the smallest of ant carts in my fleet to pass. Though none have traveled here in a while; the terrain has become unnavigable. As this is the deepest region of my dungeon, water has started to accumulate. Of course, I keep the water level manageable by levitating mesmerizing laminar ribbons of dirty fluid through the air elsewhere. As I’ve grown larger this has become increasingly difficult to stay on top of, soon I want to implement an automatic pumping mechanism.

Universally green moisture-loving plants, fungi, and slime molds coat the confined walls. Millions of worms and maggots squirm in the damp, stagnant slurry resting at the bottom while mayflies and other flying vermin saturate the muggy atmosphere. Crystal-clear transparent crabs trawl through the muck searching for hapless invertebrates and algae to devour and an uncommon non-purple variety of archer pods intermittently flashes with stunningly bright white light. How alien!

What’s fascinating to me is that the flora and fauna here generally can’t be found elsewhere in my dungeon. I doubt this is due to the damp environment as there are other such regions of my domain with poor drainage. No, I suspect the atmospheric composition is to blame; being at the lowest level and accounting for my acute lack of proper ventilation, carbon dioxide is readily available while oxygen is in short supply.

In short, the denizens who’ve colonized this place have found their niche.

And I’m all the happier for it, biodiversity is a decidedly good thing as far as a dungeon core is concerned. Still, I want more control over the conditions in my dungeon, so I fully intend on incorporating efficient irrigation, ventilation, and drainage systems in the future. Of course, I will use said control to actively encourage diversity of wildlife and environments, I just want it to be intentional.

The tunnel to my new core ‘room’ (‘Cavity’ is a better word.) is proceeding nicely. The only minor hiccup being my dungeon helpers are largely unable to traverse the bog on the tunnel’s floor. Fortunately, the slightly less moist ceiling is encrusted with massive coral-like colonies of green lichen which offer ample purchase.

At this point I’m extremely proficient with stonecutting. My abilities have grown with use, and I can confidently confirm the degree of change exceeds that which can be explained by practice alone. Parallels can be drawn with exercising muscles except I haven’t noticed any sign of diminishing returns yet.

I’ve drilled a ten-centimeter-wide tunnel a little over two dozen feet long and sloping downwards in the spatial direction of the canyon. This will probably greatly inhibit my mana regeneration and domain acquisition rates, but those are acceptable tradeoffs for security, in my opinion.

I won’t have to worry about being submerged completely in water because the tunnel’s entrance is above the bog.

Now on to my next task; I wish to prepare an emergency escape chute for my core.

The plan is simple, I will encase my core in a padded fungiwood canister (With holes to maintain mana flow and domain access.) which will be suspended over a long and inclined chute. The chute will have a plugged opening into the cliff face of the canyon below.

It’s quite simple: In the event of an emergency I will sever the beam supporting the core canister which will subsequently drop into the chute. To limit the fall rate the chute is inclined at an angle of twenty degrees from the vertical and the durable sides of the cannister should experience plenty of friction with the tunnel’s walls. The bottom of the chute is plugged with stone to prevent any nasties from finding their way to my core from that direction. The safety plug will be a staggering ten meters thick. On top of the plug is fluffy leaf litter to cushion the inevitable impact.

Once my core has fallen down and come to rest atop the solid stone plug, I will begin to rapidly carve it away. My dungeon domain will extend into the chasm thus giving me excavation access to the plug from the bottom side. Gravity will serve to remove the plug’s debris, dropping it into the river below.

With the plug removed, my core canister will fall the rest of the way and land in the river where it will hopefully get carried downstream on buoyant sacs, far away from danger. A risk? Certainly. But it’s better than guaranteed destruction.

My reasoning is that if ever an unstoppable enemy invades my dungeon and also somehow has the ability to track my dungeon core, I’ll be able to relocate far away, though doing so will by necessity sever contact with my dungeon.

Once this is complete, I’ll finally relocate my core.